


these four walls are home enough for us

by thispapermoon



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Homecoming, Longing, Mental Health Issues, PTSD, more of a love story across all the characters than a ship fic, the damages of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20777504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thispapermoon/pseuds/thispapermoon
Summary: He starts for the stairs, listening to Dad move along behind him, their feet echoing in the empty of the house. He’s spent too long in one small place, had his life crammed up against the lives of others for far too long. And yet still somehow he didn’t understand, until now, that leaving Korea meant leaving them all. Somehow, without realizing, he’d come to expect they’d be coming home with him.****Hawkeye Pierce returns from war.





	these four walls are home enough for us

He doesn’t sleep the whole way home. Instead he looks down into clouds. Looks down into the Sea of Japan. _Henry Blake's down there,_ he thinks, though he’s never once found him on all those trips to Tokyo. He looks all the same. Knows he’ll never get the chance again. 

He looks down at the green patchwork of farm country as he skims his way across the blue skies of America. 

_ blue and green and - _

Somewhere below him Radar tills soil and milks cows. Somewhere below him Mildred Potter is waiting on the front porch for her husband to come home. 

The world flashes by beneath him. 

_ blue and green and brown - _

He turns forward as they land, squeezing his eyes shut until all he can see is black.

And then there’s color. 

Color everywhere. 

Dad meets him on the tarmac. Hugs him tight until Hawkeye pulls back, unable to breathe around emotions that he cannot hope to sort out into neat, descriptive little words. Instead he notes that Dad is wearing a maroon button down under his sport coat. His eyes are drawn to the color like a hand to a scab. He finds he cannot quite look away from it for long. 

He blinks and tries to shake off the lingering haze of olive-drab. 

Blinks again and drowns instead in the memory of eyes that are _ not-quite blue _ and _ not-quite green_. 

Yellows, and reds, and lilacs, (an all-wrong-aquamarine) rush past him. They throw their arms around the few greens and browns who live this far northeast - neatly halfway around the world from the place they’ve all just left. 

Cars and billboards, buses and stop signs - he squints against the sun as the colors crowd his eyes. He feels a little sick.

The noise from the colors alone are making him dizzy, and Dad grips his arm to steer him towards the car park, shouting to be heard over the unfamiliar peals of laughter, the traffic, the propellers, the garish noises of civilian life. 

_Funny_, he thinks, _after the lullaby of bombs that peace would sound like this_. 

Dad’s still talking, but he can’t make sense of the words, even once they’re safely ensconced in the car. He nods along anyway, rolling down his window immediately and twisting in his seat to get the window down in back. The low roof feels like it’s pressing down upon him, and he grips the dashboard the whole ride home from Bangor, sweat dripping down behind his ears, furious at himself for longing for the open sky above the windshield of a jeep.

Dad rolls down his own window, quiet now that they’re out on the open road. He seems to be waiting - waiting for Hawkeye to fill in the gaps - the ones that Hawkeye can only think of as containing not just silence but all the breathable air that exists in the tiny space between the seats, and the wheel, and their lungs. 

He can only keep his eyes on the open road, tugging at his collar as he tries to inhale. 

He thinks Dad understands. Dad’s always been good at that. He doesn’t try to pry, doesn’t turn on the radio to fill the void. He seems to get that sound would only take up more space. Dad just lets the motor hum, keeps an even pressure on the gas, a steady hand on the wheel. 

The tiny town on Crab Apple Cove rises into view and he sucks in a shallow breath. His home town, with its green hills and blue shores, got him through the war.

Or so he thought. Until now. 

“Take the back road, Dad.”

It’s not the first thing that he thought he’d say to his father upon returning home from war. But he didn’t think about what returning home would really look like. Not for a few years now. And not once since that night on the bus - 

_ blue and green and - _

They drop over a hill and the town disappears, reappearing once they crest the next. 

White houses. Waving grasses. Rolling hills beside rolling waves - 

_ blue and green and - _

His dad turns onto an unpaved service road and Hawkeye relaxes at the rough feel of the wheels grinding their way over rocky stones. 

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

The road turns out along the cliffs and Hawkeye shifts in his seat to watch the sea. 

_ Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake’s plane - _

He wonders where the current leads. He wonders if any of Korea has ever washed upon the pebbled shores of Maine. 

_ was shot down over the Sea of Japan - _

He squints again, getting a headache from the sun, but doesn’t take his eyes away from the bright line of white where the sun reflects against the waves. 

_ it spun in - _

The car goes over a large bump and Dad oofs a little at the impact. 

_ there were no survivors. _

Hawkeye reaches out, the movement sudden and jerky, palm held up. Dad takes his hand and holds it as if he were still a little kid. 

They ride in silence and Hawkeye doesn’t dare let go. 

****

If he’s dreamed of Crab Apple Cove, he’s dreamed of the house sits at the end of Mistral’s Way. It looks out over the sea and it is home.

Home. 

_ Home_. 

How often he’s thought of it. Longed bitterly for it. Loved it, and mourned it, and spoken of it to anyone who would spare him the time to listen. 

Home. 

They pull up the drive and roll to a stop. 

Dad cuts the engine and for a moment they sit in silence while Hawkeye gazes up at the house. The white clapboard siding looks fresh, the curved windows of the attic that peak down at him like eyelids are familiar and friendly. The neat, forest green paint that gives a sense of importance to the shutters is all in order. Just like he left it. As if he were never gone. 

“Welcome home, son.”

Dad says the words quietly, his hand still in Hawkeye’s.

“Yeah.”

Gathering himself he takes a breath and pulls away. Pushes open the heavy door and unfurls his legs until he’s upright beside the car. 

It’s silent. 

Just the wind in the trees and the grass. A few birds. The waves beyond. 

There’s a crunch of gravel as Dad moves to open the trunk and collect his bag. The soft thud of metal as it closes again.

“Well.” Dad stands just behind him. Waiting.

“Home sweet home,” he eventually manages. The cheery note he tries for sounds strained even to his own ears and so he just stands looking up at the house, something rising in his chest that he’s not sure he can face. 

He once imagined coming home. Imagined leaping into his father’s arms at the airport. Imagined taking the steps three at a time and throwing open the front door - his own front door - to race through the house, and then out again, down and through the town. He once imagined the reunions. The laughter. The sweet triumph of his homecoming.

He doesn’t know when he stopped imagining home in any sort of realistic sense. Or when he started to take people home with him in these imaginings instead.

Maybe it all started with Trapper. 

His fists clench at his sides and Dad touches his shoulder before starting up the steps ahead of him. Hawkeye stands still, watching him set the suitcase down so that he can unlock the door. 

More than likely it started with Trapper. 

_ “Welcome to Chateau-Pierce_,” he hears himself say in a memory, “_Home of the Pierce dynasty for four generations.” _But it’s not a memory at all, he thinks brittley. It can’t be when the conversation has never left his own private imaginings.

How many times did he lead Trapper through this very front door? Poured him a drink and sat with him on the porch looking out at the sea? How often in his mind had he watched him talk and laugh with his father. Had shyly shown him is old kid bike, his winter sled, his bed.

Slowly Hawkeye unlocks his knees. Pushes down memories - memories that are not memories - a heartbreak that could never be properly grieved - and steps forward. His tired, worn boots crunch against the earth then make softer noises on the wooden treads of the steps. The fourth from the top gives a little, more than he is used to, and he frowns at the reminder that time here _ has _ passed without him. 

Dad is still waiting at the open door. His hand is steady on Hawkeye’s back as Hawkeye passes him. The hall is too quiet. Too familiar and too strange all at once. Vast compared his tent but somehow claustrophobic in its solidity.

The hall is just too quiet. 

He starts for the stairs, listening to Dad move along behind him_, _their feet echoing in the empty of the house. He’s spent too long in one small place, had his life crammed up against the lives of others for far too long. And yet still somehow he didn’t understand, until now, that leaving Korea meant leaving them all. Somehow, without realizing, he’d come to expect they’d be coming home with him. He counts the sound of shoes on steps. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

_ Two. _Dad. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

_ Two. _Dad. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

They reach the landing and Hawkeye halts when faced with the open door of his childhood bedroom. 

He steps forward. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

_ One. _Hawkeye. 

He stills. 

_ Two. Two. Two. _Dad moves, still behind him, but closer now. 

Fingers on the doorframe, Hawkeye leans, lets his body bow forward as if to enter, but his feet stay planted firmly in the hall. 

“I can’t - I can’t -”

He doesn't know why he can’t. Only that he can’t. Maybe it’s the posters that hang on the walls - the Marx Brothers and Gene Tierney - the fishing pole in the corner - 

_ Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake’s plane - _

The way the medical books sit stacked on the desk, the boxes in the corner from his old apartment - before war - waiting at the ready for the day when he’d be coming home. 

“I _ can’t_._” _

“Okay, son.”

Dad doesn’t push. Just lets him work it out.

Thrusting himself away from the doorframe he spins, boots echoing in the hall as he trudges further down the landing. He lets his fingers come to rest at a different door. Spins the knob and pushes it open. 

“I think I’m gonna stay in here for now.”

Dad nods and moves past him to heft the suitcase onto the faded roses that dot the quilt of the guest room bed. 

“This room gets good light in the afternoons. And we’ve just had a Canadian Jay nest out in the eves. Bright eyed little thing - she’ll keep you in good company.” Dad crosses and opens the windows to let the breeze skip in. It lightens the iron claw that squeezes at Hawkeye’s chest and he joins Dad at the window looking out. 

“Where?”

Dad points. 

“I see it. Look - look - she’s in the nest now.”

It’s good to see Dad smile. Hawkeye notes that the deepness of the worry lines around his eyes lessen as his does. He hadn’t realized they were there until now. 

“I’ll move out a few things from the wardrobe so you can put your things away. Mrs. Mallowman helped me pick out a few new duds for you from the Wollworth’s down in Portland - just opened up last year. We’ll have to go once you’re settled and you can pick out things to fit your own taste.” 

“I’m sure what you got will be find, Dad.”

Dad smiles again. “We’ll see. You always did have a unique sense of style. Never knew what you’d like or hate. Hopefully we did okay.”

He’s still in his fatigues. They’re dank and rumpled. They smell like the last of the still’s gin, Klinger’s cigar, Margaret’s goodbye. He pulls again at the collar suddenly itching all over. “Do you have an extra robe? Mine’s filthy.” 

Dad crosses and opens the wardrobe, “Got one in here. It’s worn but it will do. Used to wear it when you were a kid, if you remember. Couldn’t bear to part with it,” Dad reaches in a pulls out a faded blue terry cloth, “had some oftly good memories in it.”

“Making french toast,” Hawkeye smiles, touching the fabric. 

_ blue. _

“Want some?”

“Huh?”

“French toast. I bet you’re hungry after such a long trip.”

“Uh huh -”

But he’s only half listening. His eyes have focused on the other contents of the wardrobe and he reaches in, fingers smoothing over fabrics, pressing apart hangers to get a better look.

“Your mother’s.” 

Dad’s voice sounds funny. Like maybe he’s scared. Or sad. Or both. 

“I’ll move her things into your closet after we eat and bring the things we bought for you in. Couldn’t part with some of her favorite things, you know, just like I couldn’t with this old robe. It’s the memories - makes me think of her.”

Hawkeyes fingers stop on the fabric of a dress. He splays his hand wide, pressing against the softness of the cloth.

“That was your mother’s favorite.”

“I remember her wearing it.”

His voice doesn’t tremble but his insides do. They shiver like pebbles against pebbles when the waves crash down at high tide. Dad touches his elbow. 

“Let’s see about that french toast,” he says gently, and lays the robe out for Hawkeye on the bed. “Things will take about fifteen minutes if you’d like to have a shower.”

“Fifteen minutes -” Hawkeye’s voice sounds far off, “- I have three years of Korea to wash down the drain. If I go in, I might never go out again.”

“You’ll go out again,” Dad assures him, quietly. Gently. “Eventually, you will.” And Hawkeyes knows they’re no longer talking about the shower.

“Dad?”

“Yes, Hawk?”

He turns from the doorway and looks over his shoulder. Hawkeye’s fingers still against the fabric of his mother’s favorite dress. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

The look at each other and Hawkeye watches him go. Counts his steps down the stairs. Waits for him to go into the kitchen before turning back to the wardrobe.

“It’s a beautiful dress,” Klinger says, leaning in closer so he can peer over Hawkeye’s arm. “Your mother was a woman of impeccable taste.”

Hawkeye’s chest feels warm. His breath comes more easily. “Do you know she made most of these herself? She was always working on something new - hey, Klinger - did I ever tell you that you remind me of my mother?”

“I got that from a few of the nurses. Usually after I asked them out.”

They snicker, heads together, until Hawkeye tugs on Klinger’s sleeve to get his attention. 

“This room was her sewing room. I used to run around and get pins stuck in my feet.”

Klinger’s grin widens. “Boy, I bet you drove her crazy.”

It feels good to smile, the muscles of his face relaxing as they curve upwards. “You know, I guess my mother was the first woman I ever drove crazy.” 

“And not the last. Mind if I take a look?” Klinger’s weight is practically breaking his arm as he strains to see the dresses and so Hawkeye removes it and steps back.

“Why not? You could always pull off tea length. Mom said being so tall would ruin my lines.”

Eyes sparkling, Klinger all but dives into the armoire and Hawkeye bites down on a hot, bright laugh, spinning away and out of the room, down towards the sound of all too familiar piano music that’s drifting up from the floor below. 

His feet are quick on the steps, his heart dancing to the jangling tune of the keys as he skids into the library. A white hat with a thin black band bobs to the tempo over the top of the piano case and Hawkeye thinks his face might crack from the wideness of his grin. 

“‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo,” he slides onto the bench beside Father Mulcahy, toes tapping to the plodding notes as soon as he is settled. 

“Hawkeye!” The thin sound of Father Mulcahy’s voice is a far better music to his ears than the sounds he’s currently producing, though both bring Hawkeye to laughter in pure delight. 

“Still working on Lullaby of Broadway?”

“I promise it _ does _ get smoother in the middle. Eventually.”

“Aw, you always say that, Father,” he nods along with the tune, conducting a bit with an absent wave of his hand.

“Will you stop that _ infernal racket!” _

“_Charles, _ some of us like to put the Honk in Honky-Tonk.” He slides around in his seat, grinning at Charles’s red face. “Just ignore him, Father.”

Charles glowers at him from where he stands with an open copy of Moby Dick in his hands. 

“And be careful with that, _ my liege_, you’ll get snob all over it.”

There’s a laugh and Margaret’s eyes drop quickly back down to the book of poetry she’s selected. She’s leaning a hip against the corner where the built in shelves turn to continue down the length of the next wall. Hawkeye drinks her in, heart tripping a little at the sight of her. She turns the page with an air of determined concentration and ignores him.

Unfazed, he waits for her to sneak a look over at him before he waggles his eyebrows at her. She rolls her eyes and raises the book to pointedly block him from her view. 

“Moby Dick. It’s a first edition.” There’s no mistaking the awe in Charle’s voice. Or the disbelief. 

Hawkeye shrugs, shoulders still moving to the music. “It was my grandfather’s.” 

“This is quite a piano you have, Hawkeye. it’s in much better tune than the one in the Officer’s Club.” Father Mulchahy works his way through the supposed ‘smooth’ bit, frowning as he haltingly picks out the tune.

“You’d never know it.” Charles mutters, examining the binding of the tome. Margaret stifles another laugh.

“Hawkeye? Hawk?”

Dad calls him from the kitchen and he stands in one motion, dancing his way across to the kitchen and doing a change set to get through the door. 

“You called?”

Inside Dad has the oven open and is peering in but he closes the door before Hawkeye can see what’s inside. 

“Would you go take drink orders?”

“I’ll have what you’re having,” Sidney says mildly from the kitchen table where he’s reading the _ Crab Apple Cove Daily_.

“Scotch. Neat. Make it a double.” says Margaret from the sink. She’s polishing a glass with a rag and she holds it out to him. 

He frowns. “I thought you were in the living room.”

“Well, I’m in here now.”

He shrugs. He’s learned better than to argue with her unless he’s right. He takes the glass. 

“Dad, how about you? What do you want?

“Oh, I’ll have a martini -”

“- _ very dry. _” They finish the thought together. 

Margaret looks between them, then looks at Sydney, who touches the side of his nose. She laughs and turns away to open the refrigerator, pulling out a pitcher of lemonade which she hands to Hawkeye. 

“Peg will be wanting lemonade, I think.”

“_Peg?” _

Margaret cocks her head to one side. “Try the porch?” 

He’s off in a bound, lemonade sloshing wildly as his boots catch on the library rug. “Watch it, Buster,” Margaret snaps from her place by the bookshelf, but he’s already gone, front door closing on the cacophony from the piano and on Winchester’s disparaging remarks.

Outside it’s warmer than it was before, the sun high up in the sky now. 

“Ooh-ho! Lemonade! Bring it here, son!” 

He turns quickly, lemonade sloshing once again against the side of the jug.

“Wouldn’t say no to something a mite stronger if you’ve got it - and if I know you, you’ve got it. Don’t you worry yourself about the Missus, she can hold her own.”

Mildred Potter smiles up at him from where she sits beside her husband on the porch swing. They’re holding hands, gnarled knuckles and age spots making their fingers nearly indistinguishable from one another. Hawkeye looks up and into Margaret’s eyes from where she perches on the railing across from them. She shakes her head at him as if to say, _ I know_, and he has to look away. 

“I’m supposed to bring this out for Peg,” he says, remembering. 

“Down there, with the little one.” Potter points and Hawkeye moves forward to look down over the rail. 

There, like some splendid scene found time and time again in his dreams, he finds them. BJ, shoulders loose, smile wider than the open sky, holding Erin up against the sun, whirling her around as she laughs, and screams, and calls out _ da-da, da! _ And Peg, spinning with them, laughing with them, one hand on BJ’s back, one hand on Erin’s. 

The warmth in his chest ebs and glows, ebs and glows. He wants to go to them. He wants to spin, and twirl, wants to _ belong _with them. 

But BJ doesn’t look his way. 

BJ doesn’t seem to notice the sun, or the sky, or Hawkeye standing on the porch. His eyes stay on his family. Only on his family. And Hawkeye watches, glad and miserable; grateful and full of longing, all at once.

“I’ll take those,” Margaret murmurs, and suddenly his hands are empty. “We’ll wait until they come back up to the house. BJ said he can’t wait to see you.”

She moves back over to the Potters, setting the jug and glass down on a small side table before slipping back onto the rail and leaning a boot against the swing so that she gently rocks the Potters from her perch. 

He wonders what it means that Margaret is everywhere. In the library. In the kitchen. On the porch.

And that Trapper is nowhere at all.

Revolving slowly he lets his gaze linger. First on Potter and Mildred. The Colonel is more relaxed than Hawkeye’s ever seen him, grinning like a kid again while Mildred clearly teases him. And for a long time he lets himself look at Margaret, lets himself really look at her. She doesn’t look over at him, but the pink on her cheek means she knows he’s watching. 

He turns back to the yard. His chest goes purely warm as BJ spots him at last and waves, long arm slicing through the blue of the sky like a windmill. Erin runs around his ankles, chasing a ball now, while Peg chases Erin. The get tangled, tipping BJ good-naturedly over with them. He howls as they launch themselves upon him, fingers tickling, voices clear and bright.

Peace.

****

At the far end of the yard, just where the earth begins to slope away down towards the sea, a woman sits in profile on a picnic blanket. 

She is familiar, thinks Hawkeye. Like someone he met before, long, long ago. Her head is bent as if in prayer, seemingly oblivious to the house or the jocularity reigning nearby. And beside her, stretched out in the shade of the mulberry tree - the one planted by Hawkeye’s great-grandmother - a lanky, sandy-haired, boy reads in the dappled light. Occasionally he looks up and hushes the two little girls next to them as they drink from a plastic tea set. But they merely whisper and giggle into their cups and wipe jam across their pinafores paying him no mind. 

Hawkeye frowns a little, not placing them, and when a fourth tiny face peeks out from behind the broad tree trunk, he wonders for a moment how Erin Hunnicutt has wandered off and into the company of these strangers.

But, no, that’s not right. 

Erin is playing with her father and her mother. 

He can hear her voice, though it sounds far off now, far away as through piped through a badly tuned radio. He leans further into the railing, squinting, and the family before him swims more sharply into focus. 

There’s a shriek of delight from the toddler behind the tree as the oldest girl suddenly hops up and gives chase. Round and round the broad tree trunk they go until the baby, laughing, nearly trips, falling instead into the arms of the woman. She looks up suddenly to catch the child tightly in her arms - 

The child’s hat falls off and Hawkeye swallows, suddenly uneasy. Suddenly wary. 

His eyes move, searching. 

Searching.

There. 

Standing down a ways on the slope of the hill. 

In the grass - grass that is so tall that the green nearly brushes against the knee of a dark pinstriped suit - a man. 

There. 

Cut against the blue of the sky, dark hat shading the face beneath the brim. The man’s features are obscured from Hawkeye’s view, but he doesn’t need to see to know. 

It’s in the lines of the shoulders. The tall, long frame. Familiar as anything, familiar enough to know him at first glance. 

And Hawkeye has been waiting. He has been waiting a long, long time. 

The man’s head turns then, away from the little family on the blanket beneath the tree. And Hawkeye suddenly knows that if he could see the face in the shadows the man’s eyes would be burning across the distance between them and into his own. 

It’s enough to make him turn away, gasping for air. He swallows again, this time around bile, around panic, frantically looking about him for anyone to notice the man in the hat on the hill. 

But Potter and Mildred are still laughing with Margaret on the porch swing. And the Hunnicutt’s are all too busy with their beach ball to notice either the man or Hawkeye’s sudden distress. 

He can’t breath. 

His lungs won’t do it. 

He came all the way from Korea, from three eternal years of war, and he’s going to die right here on his own front porch. 

The man is still looking at him. 

And all at once he realizes that the grief that crowds his lungs will never go away. Will never, ever, go away.

He could step off the porch and walk down the grassy slope. Walk down past the tree and the children and their mother. He knows he could pass the man, only to have him turn and follow, not behind, but rather at his shoulder. He thinks that maybe he has been expected.

He could walk with the man down the slope. Across the sand. And into the sea. 

Free. 

There’s a hand on his arm. Beside him Radar keeps his gaze on the man in the distance. 

“I know, Hawkeye. I know. I see him, too."

And Hawkeye finally gasps in air. Fresh and hot with tears. He finds his own hand coming up to cover Radar’s. To grip tightly, finding anchor. 

They stand together, shoulder to shoulder, hand against hand. 

Breathing. 

Living. 

And slowly, the man turns his head again. Looks longingly towards the woman on the blanket. Watches the children sprawl out around her, watches the baby wiggle on his sister’s lap as she feeds him blueberries. 

After a long while the man turns away and slowly walks back down the hill alone. 

Radar withdraws his hand to rub messily at his eyes beneath his spectacles. 

“Imma go and see the Hunnicutts,” he mumbles and stumps down the porch steps, picking up speed until he’s out on the lawn. Seamlessly, he catches up the ball and spins around with it so that little Erin Hunnicutt has to chase him, giggling wildly as her parents laugh and clap in affectionate amusement at their antics. 

Hawkeye turns back towards the house. 

He doesn’t look back. 

Inside the light is dim. The air is cool and he slowly works on climbing the stairs, one foot, one step at a time. He has to pull himself up by the banister to make it, and even so, by the time he reaches the landing his heart is beating a little too fast and his lungs feel a little too tight. 

He drags his boots along the wood of the hall. 

The old, heavy knob of the bedroom-that’s-not-his-bedroom is cold against his fingers. He squeezes his hand into the intricate grooves of the design, glad to feel its texture against his skin. It grounds him in a way, the sensation. The weight in his palm is calming and he turns the knob slowly, waiting until he hears the click of the latch before he lets the door swing open all the way. 

And then it’s just blue and green and - 

_ blue and green and - _

Margaret looks up. Framed against windows that look out to the sky and the sea - 

_ blue and green and - _

Her eyes are just as bright as the light that catches the waves - 

_ blue and green and - _

She stands utterly still, smiling at him from across the room, eyes wet, understanding written in their warmth. Beside her, Klinger straightens up after sliding a final pin into the fabric of her dress - 

_ blue and green and - _

His mother’s dress. 

_ blue and green and - _

Klinger’s eyes are warm and wet as well, but brown like the earth. Hawkeye thinks that there’s a garden that could grow in the gentleness of Klinger’s eyes. 

_ blue and green and brown - _

His feet move forward of their own accord. Two long steps and he’s standing right before her. His hands come up to hold her waist, mindful of the pins. The fabric is warm; from his hands, from the heat of Margaret’s skin. He presses closer, looking down into her eyes -

_ blue or green - ? _He never has been sure. 

Depends on the light. 

Depends on her mood. 

Depends if he’s taken the time to look. 

He bends his head, her eyes slip shut - 

_ blue - _

She blinks slowly - 

_ green - _

The fabric is warm, from his hands - 

from his hands - 

He doesn’t realize he’s standing alone in front of the open wardrobe.

Not until he feels his father’s hand, warm against his shoulder.

His fingers still press against the soft fabric of the sea-green and sky-blue dress, warm from his touch, empty aside from its hanger. Dad sighs and Hawkeye curls his fingers against the cloth once more, then forces his hands to drop.

His father lets the quiet of the house stretch out around them, lets it linger. 

And Hawkeye swallows. Swallows down around the ghosts of the living and the too-fresh memories of the dead.

He takes a long and shaking inhale. 

Dad squeezes his shoulder again gently. 

“Why don’t you come downstairs, Ben, and have some tea.”


End file.
